July 31, 2012

HAVE YOU EVER thought that being on a sailboat at sea is like being in
a prison? Dr. Michael Stadler says in The
Psychology of Sailing: “In many respects the situation at sea does not
differ in principle from the situation in a prison or cloister. Sociologists
have described such living conditions as ‘total institutions.’” That means all
activities are carried out in the same living space, with the same objective,
under one authority.

As the skipper of a boat at sea, you are that authority — and thus the
target of every gripe and resentment. As skipper, the law requires that you
accept full responsibility for what happens on your boat, but you shouldn’t
keep to yourself all the difficult tasks that require a high degree of skill,
such as steering in bad weather, navigation, docking maneuvers, sail changes,
and so on.

It’s smarter, for your good and theirs, to teach and delegate. Offer
your crew the opportunity to learn and develop their own skills. Give them
responsibility in the day-to-day running of the ship. In this way, you’ll
instill a sense of team spirit and the satisfying feeling that they’re making
valuable contributions to the welfare of the group. And (not coincidentally) it
also keeps them too busy to think about mutiny.

Today’s
Thought

Being in a
ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.—
Samuel Johnson

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in
my soup.”

(20) “Yes, sir, is it done the way you like it?”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats
column.)

July 29, 2012

I FORGET NOW what brought it up, but my wife reminded me the other
night of what it’s like to sail at night. She recalled a night in mid-South
Atlantic when she was sitting next to me in the cockpit of our 31-footer. It
was a cloudy, moonless night, a night of complete and utter darkness — so much
so that we couldn’t even see a trace of each other. No faces, no arms, no legs,
no nothing. I could have been sitting next to Angelina Jolie.

Sailing at night can be a wonderful experience in more normal times,
especially in warm waters where phosphorescence swirls in your wake and the
trade wind sighs gently in the rigging. Brittle stars prick through the velvet
canopy of night and the moon floods the decks with a silver glow.

But sailing at night can also be quite frightening, something like
driving down the freeway blindfolded. Even on the best of nights it’s almost
impossible to see anything in the water close ahead of you, and we all know
that containers are washed off ships regularly, and that debris from continental
shorelines is floating out there along with those half-submerged containers,
timber deadheads, fishing nets, unlit weather buoys, sleeping whales, and other
yachts.

The land looks quite different at night, too.Even a harbor entrance you know well by
daylight is confusing at night until you learn to separate the lighted buoys
from the traffic lights on shore and the searchlights on the used-car lots.

It takes practice to steer by the compass only, to reef, handle sails,
and work on deck in the pitch dark.It’s
best to start gradually and gain experience by going out for a couple of hours
at dusk.You’ll notice then how
difficult it is to judge distance in the dark, and how confusing ships’ lights
can be.

And if you’re not sure who’s sitting next to you in the cockpit, I
advise you to experiment by gentle touch.You’ll know soon enough if it’s Angelina Jolie.

Today’s Thought

Observe her flame,
That placid dame,
The moon's Celestial Highness;
There's not a trace
Upon her face
Of diffidence or shyness:
She borrows light
That, through the night,
Mankind may all acclaim her!
And, truth to tell,
She lights up well,
So I, for one, don't blame her!

— W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(19) “Oh, really? So that’s where they go in summer, is it?”

(Drop by every
Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 26, 2012

EVERY
NOW AND THEN I hear somebody praising the late Bernard Moitessier for his
wonderful seamanship. They’ve usually just read one of his books and are
smitten by his wonderfully carefree attitude toward life combined with his
renowned boat-handling skill in heavy weather.

But
it wasn’t always like this. I knew Bernard quite well when I was a schoolboy. I
used to practice my schoolboy French on him, and he practiced his schoolboy
English on me.

Although
he became world-famous for his sailing exploits, he was a lousy sailor in some
respects. He lost two of his boats on reefs after falling asleep, and he
abandoned the most famous one of all, Joshua,
on a beach in Mexico after he anchored too close inshore.

One
of his favorite stories, told in his book The
Long Way (Sheridan House), involves a large dose of sheer luck that was
presented to him by a pod of porpoises.

Unbeknown
to him, because he hadn’t checked his compass course, Joshua was being carried at 7 knots toward the rocks off
mist-shrouded Stewart Island in the South Pacific.

Suddenly
“a tight line of 25 porpoises swimming abreast goes from stern to stem on the
starboard side, in three breaths, then the whole group veers right and rushes
off at right angles, all the fins cutting through the water together and in the
same breath taken on the fly.”

They
did this more than 10 times before Moitessier understood their message, checked
his compass, and turned Joshua to
starboard onto a safe course.

Then
something wonderful happened, he said.A
big black-and-white porpoise jumped high into the air and did a double forward
somersault. “Three times he does his double roll, bursting with a tremendous
joy, as if he were shouting to me and all the other porpoises: ‘The man
understood that we were trying to tell him to sail to the right ... you
understood ... you understood ... keep on like that, it’s all clear
ahead!’”

Moitessier
seemed to have as much luck as skill, but I dare say he earned his luck one way
or another and always had enough points piled up in his black box.

Today’s Thought

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

—
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s
Almanack

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(18) “Just leave it there, sir, and I’ll fetch the goldfish.”

(Drop by every
Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 24, 2012

WE ARE FAST
APPROACHING the calm season around here, the dog days of summer when the wind
disappears and the tidal streams snatch you and fling you in exactly the wrong
direction. Some of us talented whistlers come into our own on these days.
Whistling for the wind is something sailors have done since the very earliest
days of sail.According to
The Encyclopedia of Nautical Knowledge
(Cornell Maritime Press) the ritual was one of “plaintively entreating the
winds for a breeze by whistling with the lips in a variety of soft continuous
notes while facing the direction from which it was desired that the wind would
increase or spring up. Earlier custom required that a group of men occupy a
more prominent position, such as the poop, when thus engaged, especially during
a lengthy spell of light airs and calms.”

Now that you
know how to whistle for the wind correctly, there’s something else you should
know. You should do it only in calms. If you whistle when you’re on watch, and
the wind is already blowing, you invite bad weather.

Old-timers
believed that you could whistle with impunity during your off-watch, but if you
whistled during your working hours it showed that you didn’t have enough to do.
The gods therefore found something for you to do. They sent stormy weather,
which meant extra work for all hands.

The only
crew member who could whistle while he worked was the bosun’s mate, the man who
wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails when punishment was meted out. His whistling
wouldn’t bring gales because the gods of the wind and sea ignored him, judging
him to be an agent of the devil — which is exactly what the rest of the crew
thought, too, of course.

July 22, 2012

HAVING
SEARCHED the advertisements in vain for an extra-long-shaft 6-horsepower outboard
motor, I broke down the other day and bought a brand new one from the
registered dealer.I wasn’t impressed
with the service. Among other things, I asked him two questions.

The first
was: “Is there a fuel filter on this engine?”

“No,” he
said.

There was,
of course, as I discovered when I got home and looked in the owner’s manual.

The second
question was this:

“How do I
start the engine if the man driving the dinghy falls overboard, taking the emergency
kill-switch lanyard with him?How do I
start the motor to get back to him?”

“Don’t
know,” said the dealer. “I’ve never been asked that question before.”

It’s hard to
believe that a man who sells new outboards for a living had never thought of
that question for himself.

As you
probably know, the coiled, red, kill-switch lanyard is meant to be attached to
your wrist or clothing.If you fall
overboard it jerks a small semi-circular disk out of a switch on the front of the
engine. That allows a spring-loaded button to close inward and stop the motor
immediately.

But you
can’t start the motor unless that little disk is replaced.And there it is, dangling on the end of a
cord attached to your driver floating 50 yards astern.

Now, if you
look inside the engine cover you’ll see two thin wires leading to the kill
switch. My bet is that the act of pushing in the switch, which happens when the
disk is removed, either completes a circuit, grounding the spark plug so that
it won’t fire, or it breaks the hot-wire circuit to the spark plug, thus
preventing it from firing.

In the
second case, I suspect there is a good chance that if you simply cut the
circuit between the magneto and the spark plug, you’re likely to blow a diode
or do some other permanent damageto the
engine.So my guess is that the safety
switch simply grounds the circuit to the spark plug and stops it firing.

That being
the case, you ought to be able to get the engine going again by fiddling with
the two wires inside the engine cover.You’ve either got to cut one or the other, or maybe you should cut both
and twist them together.

Does anyone
a little better informed than my dealer know how to get the motor going again?
Does anyone understand the actual function of the emergency kill switch?

July 19, 2012

FOG
IS PROBABLY the greatest challenge most coastal cruisers will ever face. The
statistics show that the chances of being run down in fog by a larger vessel
are quite slim; it doesn’t happen that often. But what the statistics don’t
show are the hours of tension, stress, and even stark fear that result from the
disorientation of being wrapped in a cloak of mist that robs you of your sense
of sight.

On America’s east and west coasts,
particularly, fog may occur almost any time of the year, and it can occur with
startling suddenness. Before you know it, you’re in the thick of it, wandering
blindly through swirling mist with a rising sense of panic and vulnerability.

Your thoughts turn immediately to what can
happen now:

ØYou’re going
to get lost.

ØYou’re going
to reach port late and miss your plane.

ØYou’re to
hit the rocks or run aground.

ØYou’re going
to get run down by a large ship.

ØYou’re going
to die.

If you think this sounds melodramatic,
you’ve never been caught in fog. Fog does strange things to you. Even seasoned
boaters suffer a nervous reaction when the cotton cloud hugs them to its breast
and obscures the outside world, when your ears become your eyes because your
eyes become useless.

I can remember listening in astonishment
one evening on my little VHF radio to a Mayday call broadcast by a powerboat on
San Diego Bay. The local Coast Guard station asked what the problem was.

“We’re lost in the fog,” a man said anxiously.

“Can you see anything at all?” asked the
Coast Guard.

“We’re circling a flashing red buoy with a
16 on it, but we don’t know where to go.”

It was a channel buoy a few hundred yards
from their home marina, and in ordinary circumstances it would have been
ludicrous to put out a Mayday call. But fog is like that. It’s a panic-maker.
In any case, the Coasties were very patient. They didn’t sneer or say anything
sarcastic, much as they must have been tempted to do. They gave the lost
powerboaters a compass course to steer at dead slow speed — something they
wouldn’t normally do for fear of being sued if anything went wrong — and the
boat made it home safely, to everyone’s relief.

Today’s Thought

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over the harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then, moves on.

— Carl Sandburg,
Fog

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(15)“He’s just looking for a friend, sir. You
haven’t swallowed her by mistake, have you?”

(Drop
by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 17, 2012

IF YOU’RE at
all superstitious, you will know full well that it’s unlucky to start a voyage
on a Friday. And yet the logical part of your mind will tell you that anynumber of ships sail on Fridays and never
come to any harm.

So what’s
going on here? Well, it’s simple, really.It is unlucky to sail on Friday, but if you have saved up enough points
in your black box you can overcome the bad luck.

The
superstition is very old and very widespread. It is recognized by sailors of
different religions in many different countries, and it’s possible that it started
withthe crucifixion of Christ, which
occurred on a Friday.

It was, in
fact, the early Christians who persuaded people that Friday was unlucky. Before
that, Friday was regarded as a lucky day, a particularly auspicious day on
which to get married because it was named after the Norse goddess Frigga, who
was in charge of love and fertility.

With the
downfall of poor Frigga came the theory that Friday was a very unlucky day. It
affected sailors all over the world. The reluctance of ships’ crews to sail on
Friday did not go unobserved, even in countries with large fighting navies. But
war doesn’t wait on Fridays, and, as we know, not every ship that sails on
Friday experiences bad luck.

I believe
the Black Box Theory is at work here. The ships that don’t come to grief are
those that have a lot of points in their black boxes, enough to overcome, or at
least to lessen, the bad fortune of sailing on the wrong day.

There is
also a way around this dilemma. You can set sail on a Friday if you know how.
The thing is to start your voyage on a Wednesday or Thursday. You must go a
mile or two purposefully, and then return to your slip or anchorage to fix some
small problem that seems to have arisen. It is the seamanlike thing to do.Perhaps a turnbuckle has come slightly loose.
Perhaps you forgot to top up the water tanks. I’m sure you get the idea.

When Friday
comes, you can set sail in earnest without attracting bad luck because you are
merely continuing a voyage, not starting one.I don’t doubt that the gods know exactly what you’re doing, but they
rather admire sailors who demonstrate a little constructive cunning, so they’re
prepared to turn a blind eye.

Today’s Thought

Alas! you know the cause too well;

The salt is spilt, to me it fell;

Then to contribute to my loss,

My knife and fork were laid across;

OnFriday, too! The day I dread!

Would I were safe at home in bed!

— John Gay, Fables: The Farmer’s Wife and the Raven

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(14) “Yes, sir, the chef ran out of
garlic.”

(Drop by
every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 15, 2012

ANYONE WHO
SUFFERS from seasickness knows that it’s not just a matter of vomiting.What’s much worse is the feeling of doom and
hopelessness, the dreadful despair that floods the brain, the certain knowledge
that you will never recover from this vile disease until a slow and painful
death releases you.

There is
plenty of free advice about how to prevent seasickness, most of which doesn’t
work, but the golden rules are to stay away from alcohol, greasy foods, and
engine-room smells.Keep warm and dry,
stay on deck, keep busy if possible, and watch the horizon. And also stay away
from the ends of the boat.

To which may
be added: Take medications before sailing or the occurrence of rough weather.
The general rules is to take them three hours in advance. If you wait until you
actually feel sick it’s too late for the medicine’s prophylactic properties to
take effect. Ginger, in soft drinks or cookies, is often said to help prevent
sickness.

If you’d
like to try a new drug, check with your doctor first. Different drugs seem to
be effective for different people.And
try it out on land first, to see what the side-effects are, if any.

Seasickness
occurs less frequently for most people when they lie down. The second-best
position is standing upright, legs slightly apart, without holding on to
anything—provided, of course, that you’re not in any danger of going overboard.

What is not
so well known is that the very worst position for getting seasick is sitting
down, either in the cockpit or down below. There may be some consolation in the
fact that if you can survive being seasick for three days, you will have become
adapted to the motion, and you are not likely to get sick later during that
same trip.The immunity you build up
this way appears to last for six to 10 weeks, even if you spend some of that
time on land, between voyages.

It doesn’t
work that way for everybody, though.I
have been seasick for nine days in a row with no sign of adaptation and no
relief until we reached port.But two
weeks later, when we set off to cross an ocean in very rough weather, I wasn’t
seasick at all.

Incidentally,
research has shown that women become seasick more frequently than men do. They
seem to be more susceptible to motion sickness in general.People of either gender become less prone to
seasickness as they get older, and some authorities link this to a worsening
sense of balance. Apparently, the more acute your sense of balance, the more
likely you are to be sick. So as you get older, you’re less likely to suffer
from seasickness, but more likely to fall overboard and drown.What Nature giveth with one hand, she snatcheth
away with the other.

Today’s Thought

You may be sure that the reason Ulysses was shipwrecked
on every possible occasion was not because of the anger of the sea-god; he was
simply subject to seasickness.

July 13, 2012

WHEN I WAS 15
or 16, I used to crew for an elderly gentleman on a 25-foot gaff-rigged sloop. He
used to lure me aboard every weekend with what I thought was a fine lunch. It
consisted mainly of egg-and-onion brown bread sandwiches. Same thing every
week, made by his housekeeper.

We used to
take the sloop out to sea, where she romped along beautifully when the wind was
free, but when it came to beating, she had one very irritating habit.She used to hobbyhorse.

Those of you
who have experienced hobbyhorsing will know just how it drives you mad. The
boat just seems to rear and plunge in the same spot in the sea.No sooner does she start to move forward than
another wave comes along and stops her dead in her tracks again.All she’s doing is flinging her head up and
down and going nowhere.

I didn’t
know it then, and neither did my mentor, apparently, but in the absence of any
major design fault, hobbyhorsing is caused by too much weight in the bows and
stern, but particularly in the bows, where heavy ground tackle often
accumulates. Weight aloft also contributes to the moment of inertia, which is
the prime cause of hobbyhorsing.

When you lighten
the ends of the boat by moving heavy weighrts more toward the center, and you
remove excessive weight from the mast, the difference in performance—and
comfort—is often remarkable. (And much appreciated by young crews who are beginning
to wonder how much longer their egg-and-onion sandwiches are going to stay
down.)

Today’s Thought

To have
a stomach and lack meat, to have meat and lack a stomach, to lie in bed and
cannot rest, are great miseries.

— William Camden,
Remains.

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(12) “You don’t have to eat it, sir,
it’s just for decoration.”

(Drop by every
Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 10, 2012

A READER IN
CALIFORNIA wants to know if he needs to install a freezer on his 35-foot
sailboat, which he is planning to use for a circumnavigation next year.

I know why
he’s asking. For some reason, Americans,
more than any other nation on earth, love ice. We use it in big chunks in
iceboxes, and in small chunks under our oysters, and in medium sized chunks in
our cocktails.

The
phlegmatic British will drink their beer warm if necessary. Indeed, some
actually prefer it that way. They say that chilling it inhibits the volatile
vapors that give beer its best flavor. The French don’t need ice for their wine
and the Canadians are quite happy to suffer in silence for the sheer joy of
sailing. But Americans need ice.

That means
two things:

1. You’d
better be able to fix your reefer yourself if you plan to cruise to
less-developed countries.

2. You’ll
never have to wonder what to do with your spare time.

You can buy
a 12-volt refrigeration system to fit an icebox that will draw nearly 6 amps at
full load. That means you can run it flat out for about 7 hours on a
100-amp-hour battery before you need to start recharging, according to the
40-percent rule.

For a bit
more, you can buy what is probably the most popular system among American
long-distance cruisers, the holding-plate system.This requires a compressor coupled to your
engine or a separate generator that needs to be run for about two hours a day.

One way or
another, you pay quite dearly for ice on a small boat.If you can train yourself to do without it
you will lead a happier life, with more time to enjoy the people and scenery
around you.

It’s true
that nothing brings more joy to the heart of a sweaty sailor than the tinkle of
ice in a tall glass.But if you can’t
make ice yourself, there is an alternative. Look around the anchorage for a
boat flying Old Glory. Most American boats have ice. And Americans have a
well-earned reputation for generosity.If there’s one thing more joyful than the sound of ice in your glass,
it’s the sound of someone else’s ice in your glass.

Today’s Thought

The Americans are a funny lot; they drink
whiskey to keep them warm; then they put some ice in it to make it cool; they
put some sugar in it to make it sweet, and then they put a slice of lemon in it
to make it sour. Then they say “Here’s to you” and drink it themselves.
— B. N.
Chakravarty, India Speaks to America.

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(12) “It’s OK, sir, I know that one.
He can swim.”

(Drop by
every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 8, 2012

I
SEE THAT Laura Dekker, the world’s youngest solo circumnavigator, is still busy
writing a book about her round-the-world adventure. She’s now crossing the
Pacific en route to a new home in New Zealand with a crew, a young man called
Bruno Ottens. She’s still appealing to the public for money to fund her trip, and
also apparently busy inventing new English words.

“Mweh,”
she says in her blog, “I felt so bad.” And again: “Blegh ... the wind has
dropped ...”

She
should take care. By the time she gets to New Zealand, the Kiwis won’t be able
to understand her, thanks to the mwehs and bleghs and whatever else she might
be cooking up linguistically.

***

WE
LIVE in rude times. Perhaps Congress sets the example for the ill-natured
discourse that pervades our country today. There is a lack of good old
fashioned courtesy, and a whole host of demands for individual rights that are
not in the interest of the community as a whole. Too much liberty is being
taken in the name of free speech to indulge in foul language, spoken and
written — harsh language that is intended to shock, if not hurt.

Women
are as guilty as men in this respect. Recent blogs by women sailors in Seattle
are rife with four-letter words. Unnecessary four-letter words. They add
nothing but foul language to the narrative, except perhaps an indication of the
writer’s nature.

I
understand that modern American women find themselves in direct competition
with men in many ways. They certainly seem to sense a need to match men in
profanity. But not all men use f-words in their regular speech, and even fewer
use them in their written language. The presence of a four-letter word does not
of itself add artistic merit to written language. It adds only shock, and then
only to start with. Swearing is a poor and lazy substitute for lively,
descriptive writing, which demands those other nasty four-letter words, hard work.

I,
for one, could use a little gentleness, a little modesty, a little reserve, in
the blogs I read. I don’t care to know that the lady sailor was upset because
the f-ing anchor got f-ing stuck in the f-ing mud. I don’t care to know that
the lady blogger moving aboard her new boat found a nice place to stow her
thongs. Where she keeps her intimate underwear is not my business. Or anybody
else’s.

Today’s
Thought

Politeness
is the flower of humanity. He who is not polite enough is not human enough.

—
Joubert, Pensées

Tailpiece

“Waiter,
there’s a fly in my soup.”

(10)“You must be from animal welfare, sir — I’ll fetch him a
spoon at once.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly
about Boats column.)

July 5, 2012

I
SEE THEY’VE FOUND Higgs’ bosun at long last. Found him in a cave in the Swiss
Alps, of all places. The news has made headlines everywhere.

Capt.
Higgs should never have let him ashore, of course. His bosun never drank on the
good ship Hellfire, but every time he
set foot on land he fell prey to his two weaknesses, booze and broads.

Many’s
the time Capt. Higgs rescued his bosun from the arms of a blousy blond in some
tavern of ill repute, but the good Capt. forgave him for all his sins. Nobody
had ever made the Hellfire run so
smoothly. When the bosun was on board everything worked like well-oiled
machinery. When other ships were in trouble, whether it was a question of bad
accounts or saving sails from destruction in storms, the bosun was there
smoothing things out on the Hellfire.
He was the glue that held everything together, the brains behind every scheme
and the brawn behind every movement.

His
reputation was world-wide, and while there was evidence for all to see of how
smoothly he could make things work, some naysayers actually doubted that he
existed at all.

To
tell the truth, even Capt. Higgs didn’t know what the bosun’s secret of success
was. The captain often said discovering the bosun was like discovering
electricity. Nobody knew what electricity was at that time and nobody could
have imagined the many uses we put it to today. But Higgs discovered the bosun,
so the bosun keeps the universe together and Higgs gets all the credit.

I
just hope they’ll extract the bosun from that Swiss cave before the Swiss
broads find him. Or he finds them.

Today’s Thought

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in
Night:

God said, Let Newton be! and all was
Light.

—
Pope, Epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton

Tailpiece

“Waiter,
here’s a fly in my soup.”

(9)“Not to worry, sir,
they dissolve in a few minutes.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly
about Boats column.)

July 3, 2012

ALTHOUGH
FIBERGLASS has proved an efficient and long-lasting material for boat-building,
it still doesn’t match up to wood in many ways, in my opinion. Wood is Nature’s
wonder boat-building material.And it’s
as good for the job now as it ever was.

It’s
stronger, pound for pound, than fiberglass. It’s stiffer, pound for pound than
steel, aluminum, or fiberglass. It floats, it accepts fastenings well (you can
actually attach things with nails or screws), it’s plentiful, and it’s easily
repaired with simple tools. On top of all this, it’s biodegradable and it’s
warm and appealing to the human soul.

Unfortunately,
a wooden boat cannot be mass-produced as simply and cheaply from a standard
mold as can a fiberglass craft.And
unless you make special arrangements, a wooden hull won’t last as long as a
fiberglass one because, besides being biodegradable, it’s also easily digested
by a variety of hungry microbes, borers, and sea worms.

For a
one-off hull, however, there’s still nothing to beat wood. The tendency these
days is often to seal the wood during construction with several coats of epoxy
resin. This is supposed to make it resistant to rot and give it a life that
should last as long as fiberglass. The coating of epoxy is efficient at
blocking the passage of water and so will keep the wood drier than most bugs
can stand, but no epoxy coating will block the passage of water vapor totally.
That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to coat thick timbers with epoxy.
They only have to swell a little and the epoxy will split, allowing water to
enter and effectively become trapped there.

I believe a
better approach is to laminate thinner pieces of timber so that each individual
piece is isolated and encapsulated, but I still have doubts about totally
sealing wood with plastic resins.

In my
limited practical experience in these matters, I have always felt it safer to
paint one surface of the timber with ordinary oil-based paint that can
“breathe” and allow trapped moisture to escape. My gut feeling is that no
matter what you do, water will find its way in sooner or later, and you’d do
better to provide a path for it to get out again.

Today’s
Thought

Ingrained in
most of us is a creative spirit, and nowhere can this find a better reward than
in building a boat.— Edwin
Monk.

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(8)“That’s funny, madam, most people
find cockroaches.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a
new Mainly about Boats column.)

July 2, 2012

HOW DO YOU CONTACT a strange vessel by
radio? It can be faintly embarrassing to call on VHF when you don’t know the
name of the vessel. It’s not much use to broadcast: “Big vessel on the horizon
heading towards me, come in please.”

So what’s the best way to go about informing
someone that they’re on a collision course with you?

Well, there’s probably no best way that
covers all circumstances, but we may be able to figure out some essentials.
First, you have to attract the other vessel’s attention, presuming he’s
listening on Channel 16. The best attention-getter is the vessel’s name, if you
can see it, or if you have AIS. But, presuming you can’t see it, how do you
address this unknown vessel?

If it’s a class of vessel you can describe
accurately, such as a tug-and-tow, an aircraft carrier, or a submarine, you have
an advantage straight away. It’s almost as good as a name. Otherwise, confine
yourself to “motor vessel” or “sailing vessel.”I say this because you might be tempted to call “freighter,” and I know
from experience that some container ships or car carriers won’t recognize
themselves if you call them “freighters,” and they won’t reply.

The second thing you need to establish is
roughly where you are. Your ship-to-ship VHF range is restricted to a few
miles, so it’s reasonable to describe your position as “Admiralty Inlet” or “Juan
de Fuca Strait,” but much better if you can place yourself off some well-known
landmark shown on the chart. “Two miles south-west of Houndstooth Point” or “Vicinity
of Buoy E12.” Don’t be tempted to give your exact GPS co-ordinates in this
initial broadcast. Right now, you’re just trying to establish communication.

Thirdly, tell the other vessel where you
are in relation to him. Say you’re directly ahead of him, or on his port bow,
or wherever. And, if you can, guess which way he’s heading: “Vessel steaming
south” etc.

Fourthly, give him your boat’s name.

Here then, are a couple of examples of reasonable
attempts to contact another ship or boat under way:

* “Tug steaming south two miles west of Cherry Point, this is the
sailboat Scuttlebutt on your starboard bow, do you read please? Over.”

* “Power vessel in Bellingham Bay, this is the sailboat Scuttlebutt
directly ahead of you. What are your intentions, please? This is Scuttlebutt. Over.”

* “Sailing vessel on port tack two miles east of Heron Island,
this is the sailboat Scuttlebutt on starboard tack. Please reply Channel 16.
Over.”

Today’s Thought

A good talker, even more than a good
orator, implies a good audience.

— Lesie Stephen, Life of Samuel Johnson.

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”(7)“Yes, sir, it’s the flavor of the week.”